Occupy Tampa, hoping to “liberate” public space, entered Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park on Thursday night and called it their “new home.” But the police would not allow them to stay and arrested 29 Occupy Tampa participants.

According to WTSP, fifty attempted to occupy the park. Twenty left the park when police began to give orders to leave or be arrested. The action was part of “Public Space Liberation Day,” which they describe on the Occupy Tampa website:

Occupy Tampa, continuing to exercise the right to peacefully assemble as granted by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, announces the imminent liberation of a public space. Occupation is a form of peaceful protest and is guaranteed to United States citizens by the Constitution, the supreme law of the land…

The occupation petitioned Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn earlier in the week to allow tents, tables and other items in the park. WMNFreports the mayor’s chief of staff refused to grant more “accommodations.” Any occupiers who disobeyed “city ordinances, for example by having tents in a public park,” would be arrested. (The occupation has been sleeping on sidewalk in front of Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park for over 7 weeks.)

Occupy Tampa has tried to occupy a public park throughout the day but they have found that the police will not allow bags and various other items in the park if they are engaged in political expression. In the video below, an officer sternly tells an individual (who is possibly a veteran) that he is doing his job and he cannot take his stuff in the park. He says something to the officer about having a picnic in the park. The officer replies, “You’re not having a picnic. You’re protesting.” Another officer says you can’t take your family out and protest and then bring stuff out.

There had been arrests of occupiers before the twenty-nine arrests last night but nothing on this scale. The arrests just about doubled the number of people who had been arrested thus far for trying to occupy a park space in Tampa.

Firedoglake’s premier live blog continues now. Here is a Twitter list to follow for the latest updates from occupations all over the country.

5:45 PMThis was posted more than ten days ago, but it is a very important post on Tim Pool, a person who has become well-know for his Ustream from Occupy Wall Street. Jay Rosen, who runs the Press Think blog, dissects what Tim Pool does and how he is transforming citizen journalism. (*Firedoglake’s coverage of the Scooter Libby trial gets a mention.)

Being a livestream he acts as ‘eyes and ears’ for the viewers. Literally. People will tell him to move the camera somewhere and he’ll do it. They’ll ask for interviews with someone, and Tim will go over and do so… The viewers will ask him questions and he won’t rest until he gets them their answers.

In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”

2:41 PM Occupy Phoenix and others now protest the Salt River Project, a utility company in Arizona that is on the board of ALEC. The action continues the Occupy ALEC demonstrations that have been going on during an ALEC conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Police lined up in formation and made eight arrests. Five people were detained. Unclear for what but chatter on Twitter suggests they were on the sidewalk and police wanted them to move.

1:58 PM Yasha Levine of eXiled on the appalling treatment Occupy LA protesters received at the hands of LAPD:

…don’t believe the PR bullshit. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD’s attack on Occupy LA–not unless you think that people peacefully protesting against the power of the financial oligarchy deserve to be treated the way I saw Russian cops treating the protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg who were demonstrating against the oligarchy under Putin and Yeltsin, before we at The eXiled all got tossed out in 2008. Back then, everyone in the West protested and criticized the way the Russian cops brutally snuffed out dissent, myself included. Now I’m in America, at a demonstration, watching exactly the same brutal crackdown…

He says most of the abuse happened to protesters already in police custody, “outside the range” of the press/news media. Some sadistic examples:

*The 100 protesters in my detainee group were kept handcuffed with their hands behind their backs for 7 hours, denied food and water and forced to sit/sleep on a concrete floor. Some were so tired they passed out face down on the cold and dirty concrete, hands tied behind their back. As a result of the tight cuffs, I wound up losing sensation in my left palm/thumb and still haven’t recovered it now, a day and a half after they finally took them off.

* One seriously injured protester, who had been shot with a shotgun beanbag round and had an oozing bloody welt the size of a grapefruit just above his elbow, was denied medical attention for five hours. Another young guy, who complained that he thought his arm had been broken, was not given medical attention for at least as long. Instead, he spent the entire pre-booking procedure handcuffed to a wall, completely spaced out and staring blankly into space like he was in shock.

* An Occupy LA demonstrator in his 50s who was in my cell block in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center told us all about when a police officer forced him to take a shit with his hands handcuffed behind his back, which made pulling down his pants and sitting down on the toilet extremely difficult and awkward. And he had to do this in sight of female police officers, all of which made him feel extremely ashamed, to say the least.

We’re to believe abuse/torture at Abu Ghraib or even Guantanamo was the result of just a few bad apples. There are only a few laws/social norms standing in the way of protesters being treated much worse and they seem to be dwindling. The prison regimes here have not been influenced by Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Those prison regimes are exports from America. Just read the Solitary Watch blog. This is how detainees/prisoners are treated in America.

1:53 PM Occupiers in Iowa will be protesting drone warfare at a drone manufacturing facility in Cedar Rapids.

1:30 PMRoundup on police violence during Occupy LA eviction: from LA Weekly, photojournalist was mauled. The post includes video, which I posted here a few days ago and which CBS has been taking down (but video keeps going back up). Also, Lisa Derrick gets a mention for her coverage of the eviction. One of her photos of a protester’s bruised hand is used.

1:16 PM The farce that is the Boston Police Department seizure of Occupy Boston’s kitchen sink

1:01 PM I really enjoy and find all the musicians that are playing at occupations to be critical to the Occupy movement. That includes famous and lesser known musicians especially ones you might call “underground.” I did a post on Jackson Browne & Dawes playing Zuccotti yesterday that includes video of their entire performance.

12:58 PM Now, here’s video of Occupy ALEC getting pepper sprayed by police. The spray was orange like the spray was that was used on UC Davis students. Not only are they sprayed but police also destroy a banner being carried.

12:57 PM Went on Australian radio to talk about Occupy & WikiLeaks. Here’s a link to the station and you can follow the host who invited me – @perthtones – on Twitter.

10:20 AM Naomi Wolf’s lengthy rebuttal to Joshua Holland of AlterNet, who helped promote a backlash against Wolf when she wrote “The Shocking Truth Behind the Crackdown on Occupy,” and suggested Homeland Security was involved. The initial post could have been better sourced. Holland was upset with the lack of evidence in her Comment is free article at The Guardian. Now, she has fired back with some pretty substantial arguments to support calling attention to Homeland Security’s role in the crackdowns on occupations.

Joshua Holland will have a post soon in response to Wolf’s rebuttal. I haven’t written anything for The Dissenter on this discussion yet but it is tempting. The coordination between municipalities and federal government is obviously happening. As Wolf’s post indicates, Truthout‘s Jason Leopold is trying to piece together evidence to show the extent of cooperation.

10:15 AM Rep. Donna Edwards makes certain she speaks to Occupy DC during their protest at the DCCC fundraiser last night. Her appearance seems to have brought out the age-old tension among left-leaning activists: To support or not to support Democrats?

10:10 AM Jackson Browne appeared on “Countdown” last night. Here’s the clip:

227 Responses
to “Live Blog for #Occupy Movement: Occupy Tampa Participants Arrested After Refusing to Leave a Public Park”

Anyone who doesn’t believe that every arm of our repressive state mechanism is involved in some way in countering this Movement is willfuly blind or is part of that mechanism.

Proving direct involvement may be an important exercise but it will change nothing even though it may educate some about our so called Free Country.

The PTB are aware of the potential power of this nascient Movement and are marshalling their forces for frontal and rearguard actions. Since they base their actions on fear and loss of their power their reactions will continue to escalate on all fronts.

On December 6th Occupy Wall Street will join in solidarity with a Brooklyn community to re-occupy a foreclosed home. The day of action marks a national kick-off for a new frontier for the occupy movement: the liberation of vacant bank-owned homes for those in need. The banks got bailed out, but our families are getting kicked out. The fight to reclaim democracy from the banks is growing from Wall Street to Main Street.

I may have been a little strident in my characterization of those who don’t see the obvious but it wasn’t aimed at the good people here, it was aimed at those in the media who deny the connection.

Anyone who has studied the ’60s or was there understands that our government will and has used every means at it’s disposal to smash dissent.

Even the small White Panther Party was considered such a threat that Nixon sent Hoover’s FBI, the CIA, NSA, DIA, DOJ and others to smash that Movement, all working with local Detroit Red Squad and state agencies.

It is important that these collusions be exposed today but our courts and Ruling Class will not confront them like they did in the ’70s. The creation of the DHS and the Patriot Act guaranteed the death of rule of law in this country. The recent expansion of the Militaries power to indefinately detain citizens in the US shows the direction we are heading.

Proving direct involvement may be an important exercise but it will change nothing even though it may educate some about our so called Free Country.

You say that “every arm of our repressive state mechanism is involved”. It is important to know who “every arm” includes. The only way one can discover that is through evidence of direct involvement. And as specifically as possible. And understanding how those arms are acting. We must educate ourself to the specifics in order to effectively deal with them. Because we cannot deal with everything everywhere all at once.

Without investigation, we were not aware that PERF existed and that it had manuals for police forces on on “managing mass demonstrations”.

Without investigation, we were not aware that what people were calling DHS Police were members of the DHS Federal Protectives Services, normally assigned to protecting federal buildings.

Without investigation, we did not know that the DHS Federal Protective Services reports to Rand Beers, DHS Undersecretary, National Protection and Programs Directorate. And that his role is as follows:

As Under Secretary for NPPD, Beers oversees the coordinated operational and policy functions of the Directorate’s subcomponents – Federal Protective Service (FPS), Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C), Infrastructure Protection (IP), Risk Management and Analysis (RMA), and the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program – in support of the Department’s critical mission.

Without investigation, we did not know which police chiefs were on the board of PERF, that the DOJ Community Oriented Policing Services also funds PERF, and that PERF coordinates with the FBI.

Without investigation we will hamper clear thinking and action with mindless paranoia.

I do agree TD, but i guess my frustration is with the idea that uncovering these crimes will lead some to believe we have a system that will correct them. Hopefully the uncovering of these crimes and the unwillingness of our leaders to correct them will bring more people to the realization of what kind of Regime we truly live under.

I guess i see this as necessary and important but somewhat of a distraction from the critical work of building this Movement.

so while we are busy looking for evidence which they have control of, they are busy shutting the movement down and putting protestors in their database to make it easier to pick them up as america is now a battlefield and dissent is not allowed beyond posting comments on a website – although that might be censored too

Doing both is a necessity. Otherwise it is easy enough to shut the movement down by marginalizing them as loons. It’s why unproven conspiracy theories are not tactically helpful to getting awareness or change.

You mean all those conspiracies that are coming true right now before our eyes???. With the bill the senate just passed declaring america a battleground, they have in effect declared war on the people. And they will use all means including name calling to maintain power. So I would not waste too much energy on worrying abut being called names

Don’t the mayors have better things to do with their time? Don’t they have more pressing concerns? If they are being provoked by outside interests, what’s in it for them? Are they being bribed and/or blackmailed?

So your plan instead of quaking in fear at what those folks are conspiring to do is what? Not “your” personally, buy your suggestion for a plan. Wasn’t FISA a tipoff. Wasn’t the PATRIOT Act a tipoff. Wasn’t the fact that the FBI had never been reformed a tipoff? So now the military can use drones instead of depending on the police or the national guard. How has the situation changed?

(1) They are afraid that the Occupy Wall Street movement will expose the corruption at city hall, (2) They are getting pressure from the folks who have been contributing funds to their election campaigns ($1000 will buy you substantial access in a lot of cities), (3) They fear being in the news for having mismanaged the suppression of the encampment.

because they are training to pick up US citizens which under The Posse Comitatus Act is illegal.

is the United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) that was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction. Its intent (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) was to limit the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of the land. Contrary to popular belief, the Act does not prohibit members of the Army from exercising state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order”; it simply requires that any orders to do so must originate with the United States Constitution or Act of Congress.

Well they now by passing the bill have made it legal.

As for my sources just friends I know. No reason to doubt them, why else would congress pass this if our troops were not being trained to pick us up

I think they have a few more steps to go before they move in with mass arrests. They will implode the current financial system and close banks. people will lose everything and chaos will break out. they will move in to keep us “safe” They might even start another war to distract us.

I think all we can do is be prepared as much as possible. Many are waking up, but too many are still asleep. Time alone will tell how it plays out.

Fannie Mae hasn’t been too pleased with the publicity over the Rorey case. In their filing, the company’s lawyers don’t just request all email correspondence between Christopher and Tawanna Rorey and Occupy Atlanta. The lawyers also demand any and all emails between Alam and the activists.

“What angle are they coming from?” Tawanna Rorey wonders. “What are they really after? I know it’s not for our good … This just shows you how deep, how deep and dirty and low down big business is. They stop at nothing.”

Fannie Mae also wants copies of all stories and interviews concerning the Roreys. The lawyers write:

Produce all articles Plaintiff and/or her attorney have copied which were in any print newspaper and/or online relating to the Foreclosure Sale. Produce copies of all recorded interviews given by Plaintiff, Christopher Rorey, Plaintiff’s attorney, Asim Alam, and/or anyone purporting to speak on Plaintiff’s behalf, relating to the Foreclosure Sale.

If Fannie Mae has its way, their lawyers will soon be coming after HuffPost.

Gov. Scott Walker’s administration could hold demonstrators at the Capitol liable for the cost of extra police or cleanup and repairs after protests, under a new policy unveiled Thursday.

The policy, which also requires permits for events at the statehouse and other state buildings, took effect Thursday and will be phased in by Dec. 16. Walker administration officials contend the policy simply clarifies existing rules.

Groups holding demonstrations could be charged for the costs of having extra police on hand for the event. Costs associated with a counterprotest could be charged to that second group. The costs would be $50 per hour per Capitol Police officer – costs for police officers from outside agencies would depend on the costs billed to the state. The police could require an advance payment as a requirement for getting a permit and also could require liability insurance or a bond.

aclu basically states that the definition under the patriot act could be applied to anyone or group whose acts were designed to influence or coerce govt policy. Combine that definition with the bill they just past and you have to be blind not to see where this is going. 9/11 was never about a war on international terrorist it was about using it to declare war on people back home

Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Pub. L. No. 107-52) expanded the definition of terrorism to cover “”domestic,”" as opposed to international, terrorism. A person engages in domestic terrorism if they do an act “”dangerous to human life”" that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.

Did you notice that S-W-I-F-T L-U-C-K G-R-E-E-N-S (which doesn’t make a lot of sense even as a code name) is an anagram for L-E-F-T W-I-N-G S-U-C-K-E-R-S? The funny thing about this hoax is that it sucked in a huge number of right-wingers as well.

Download this to see the original pictures used in the hoax. The one on the http://proliberty.com article is page 119. The name of the camp Kyo-hwa-so No. 1 – Kaechon has been photoshopped with the title Swift Luck Greens (Maximum Sec.), Department of Homeland Security, Central Wyoming. The reference map showing the location of the facility in North Korea has been overlain with a cut-and-paste of the DHS seal, likely copied from an older version of the DHS web site.

Your citing of ACLU’s concerns about the National Defense Authorization Act is on target. They cite the text that is actually in the bill that went to the Senate. The Senate made some changes to the wording, but most commentary so far says that it doesn’t materially change the amendment, just gives the President more discretion.

It’s clear where some folks in Congress want it to go. Lindsay and McCain in particular. But their motives are trying to protect President Bush, VP Cheney, and themselves from being held accountable for war crimes. That comes through in Graham’s “Democrats want to criminalize the war on terror.” It is the same old lie that Democrats are soft on defense that provides cover for Democratic support of the MIC.

Well if my memory serves me none other than glenn beck got james meiges to do that story. Also

ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.
(a) In General- In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations.
(b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure–
(1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster;
(4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

and there is this

ARLINGTON, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jan. 24, 2006–KBR announced today that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component has awarded KBR an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contingency contract to support ICE facilities in the event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton (NYSE:HAL).

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.

You can go back further to rex 84 program which came out during oliver north hearings. Then there is history. camps teh US put japs, germans etc in during ww11 and the concentration camps teh nzi denied existed right up until the end

Occupy Columbia will travel to support our brothers and sisters at Occupy Aiken for their vigil on Saturday! They’ve repeatedly been denied a permit to protest and will need extra bodies to help with this event. Join us at the State House at 9:30am and we will leave just as soon as everyone is there.

You’re bobbing and weaving as much as some of my conservative buddies do when I discuss politics with them. If you clicked through the the Meigs link, it wouldn’t be your memory that associated Glenn Beck with the Meigs story; it’s in the printed context of the article that Meigs was on Glenn Beck. That is a guilt-by-association argument.

The reason that I posted the comment is because for Camp Swift Greens (1) it is true that it is an anagram of Left Wing Suckers; that’s easy enough to check out. (2) More importantly, Meigs provided links to the documents that he was citing (a skill that’s easy to learn btw). And that link proved out true but required that I go through the web sites’ home page because it blocked deep-linking to a page in a PDF. And it didn’t take long to find the page that had the image that was used in the hoax.

As for what you cite here:

(4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

That is standard legislative boilerplate and could mean anything. You need other evidence to convince me that FEMA has gotten into the detention business. First of all, it would destroy their ability to get people to respond in cases of real natural disasters. And there are other federal agencies with long experience in the detentio business, such as DOJ Prisons and DHS ICE.

But you caused me to check out FEMA’s authorizations and organizational structure. More in a minute.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.

Yep, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of DHS detains lots of undocumented immigrants and then deports them. Occupy Birmingham is protesting at a county detention facility in Alabama that is contracting to do this detention work right now. Within the narrow context of the head of ICE, yep, they probably would like their own facilities. So they hire a construction company and KBR wins the bid. KBR started during World War II building federal facilities and made a bundle on military and NASA facilities during the 1960s and continues to be among a small number of construction companies that the federal government contracts with for large projects. And it has wired Congress to get additional business.

Rex 84 apparently was nipped in the bud thanks to Jack Brooks and the indiscretions of Louis Giuffrida. But the idea of gaming out government continuity under a whole range of possibilities remains. And those likely go into alternative plans that specify logistical requirements, chain of command, coordinating agencies and entities and so on. They are contingency plans and it requires those contingencies to appear. Then a number of them are presented to whoever will make the decision about what to do. On 9/11, that whoever apparently was Dick Cheney.

The US has had fits of suppression of rights since John Adams was President. From shortly after its creation, the FBI has been in that business. Lots of agencies in the government potentially have that power; in some respects that’s what governments do when they are not checked by democratic institutions.

I’m concerned, but I’m not going to go around with my hair on fire. It doesn’t help muster public support to do that. And it doesn’t help conquer the fear factor, a critical factor in ending repression, should the hammer come down.

I understand your concerns regarding a number of provisions relating to the detention of terrorists captured by the United States government. I carefully considered these provisions while the legislation was debated on the floor. While I agree that the provisions in the bill are not perfect, I believe they represent a significant improvement over the original version passed by the Armed Services Committee in June. Furthermore, I supported three amendments offered by Senator Diane Feinstein to make reasonable modifications that would have clarified the applicability of the provisions in the bill. While two of those amendments failed by votes of 45-55, the Senate did adopt an amendment from Senator Feinstein to ensure that the bill does not affect existing U.S. law or authorities relating to the detention of U.S. citizens, lawful resident aliens, or any person captured or arrested in the United States. On December 1, 2011 the Senate passed the NDAA by a vote of 93-7.

I’m surprised that no one brought up the Northern Command and their crosstraining with National Guard. I think we all need to panic now and avoid the rush, then we can move on to deciding what if anything we can do to further the Movement.

Our betters have been planing and preparing for the inevitable uprising for many years so batten down the hatches and get ready for a very rough ride.

The Northern Command cross-training with the National Guard is like saying the US military is cross-training with the National Guard. The US military and the National Guard carried out martial law in the cities of the US in 1968. This is not new, just new designation of the chain of command. The 82nd Airborne secured DC and Baltimore, and the 101st Airborne secured Chicago in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King. The US military under Gen. Douglas McArthur, whose aide was Dwight D. Eisenhower, cleared the Bonus Army out of DC in 1932.

Some of the police chiefs who have taken part in JINSA’s LEEP program have done so under the auspices of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a private non-governmental group with close ties to the Department of Homeland Security. Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, was so enthusiastic about the program that by 2005 he had begun organizing trips to Israel sponsored by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials to receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts.

PERF gained notoriety when Wexler confirmed that his group coordinated police raids in 16 cities across America against “Occupy” protest encampments. As many as 40 cities have sought PERF advice on suppressing the “Occupy” movement and other mass protest activities. Wexler did not respond to my requests for an interview.

I was in Detroit during the riots of ’67 and while waiting for my ride in front of the Jefferson Assembly Plant has a soldier from the 101st Airborne walk his bayonet under my chin and laugh. I know what Martial Law looks like.

I was in Baltimore as a college student. A bunch of us went up to the roof of the graduate student apartments to see the smoke rising from East Baltimore and West Baltimore. While we were up there the ragtops with guys at the ready, lying in the canvas with their M-16s rolled by. They glanced up at us. That was when we decided that being on the roof might not be the greatest idea.

On December 3rd, Occupy Portland will once again occupy a public space. We have decided to do this after carefully considering many of the concerns expressed about our previous encampment, the sustainability of the space and the occupation, the environmental impact of our stay, the security concerns some have voiced, and the disruptions that may be caused to those around the park.

Every school field and park in the Detroit area was full of military, every main street had APCs rolling, every building over two stories had snipers. Luckily the Army didn’t issue ammo so the killing was done by the local troops.

I am now remembering the Great Training Programs ordered by Bush and his Merry Band of Theives. They did all kinds of special training, even at Hospitals and used Ghost Buster suits for HazMat training for that Chemical Weapon of Mass Destruction. I know you remember. You have to remember the Plastic sheeting and Duct tape.

I think the reason we are going to see an all out attempt to crush the Occupy Movement is because it has struck at the true heart of the Beast. It is striking at the real power that Dr King was beginning to address when he was removed.

Most previous movements were aimed at specific symptoms, racial inequality, Imperial War, enviornmental distruction. All of these are symptoms of the disease called Capitalism.

This is very dangerous ground we are walking on but the people of the Occupation are showing no fear and that is increadible.

That also reminds me of the Lab goggles and shields for occupiers. If I had the money I’d buy them all one. I also remember American parents of military members having to purchase their kids and husbands bullet proof vests because Rummy and Georgie couldn’t do it.

Ayman Masri, who retired from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office two months ago, was instrumental in bringing the Jordanian teams to Urban Shield. Masri, who now works for Cytel Group Inc., an organization focused on bringing the Urban Shield program to other parts of the United States and the world, said he wanted the Jordanian teams to gain the experience.

His goal is to have the international community participate in Urban Shield. Terrorism, Masri said, goes beyond country, religion and race.

“We are all fighting terrorism these days,” said Masri, who was born and raised in Jordan.

It looks like it’s fundamentally an equipment and services sales event for the HSIC.

We haven’t test just the the soapbox yet. Right now the issue is permanent encampments — if money is speech, are tents also speech? If the judges rule for the cities, then the next test will be 24/7 presence. Then the test will be the use of public land for public assembly, which gets to the soapbox in a square issue.

Are the judges consulting each other? That is a very interesting question. Coordination and common mindset are hard to separate these days.

When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again.

Kevin, good job exposing LAPD to the sunlight of disinfectant herein. The disinfo campaign against #OccupyPortland ramped in preparation for the eviction and just keeps coming. You might take a look at this.

In particular, we would like to single out Qorvis’s relationship with the Bahraini regime, who Seth Thomas Pietras apparently trains ‘robots’ to disseminate propaganda to local media, newspapers and radio to warn Bahraini taxi drivers against giving disparaging quotes about the regime (special props to @subverzo for flushing this scam out: http://tinypic.com/r/zx9sms/5 ). Robots, in this case, likely means twitterbots, fake blogs that @QorvisGPS maintains and the monitoring of Facebook and, in Seth’s particular instance, Twitter!

Occupy Baton Rouge
Occupy nola is under threat of eviction. Everyone should contact Mitch Landrieu on facebook, call the mayors office, send a letter or otherwise express your disappointment. Let him know that people around the state are watching what he is doing now! He may want to run for state wide office one day and he should know that we are watching all around the state and that we will remember!
Like · · Share · 23 minutes ago ·

(My understanding was that most likely tickets & citations would be issued instead of arrests, but there is probably some concern about the coal stove they have been using as well.)

(Technically, there is nothing in the Poughkeepsie Ordinances or published park regulations about a curfew; however there are permit regulations for just about everything … even one section about “spontaneous gatherings” – how can one know 30 days in advance there will be a “spontaneous gathering?” Been reading through the City Charter & Ordinances here:

In 1968, Eugene McCarthy broke the silence of the Democratic Party about the Vietnam War by announcing that he was going to primary Lyndon Johnson. Shortly thereafter, Robert Kennedy threw his hat into the ring and shortly after that Lyndon Johnson resigned. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the field was wide open as to who would oppose Hubert Humphrey on and antiwar platform. Kennedy’s delegates rallied around George McGovern because of the bad feeling that the McCarthy-Kennedy primary battles in the spring had created. In the disastrous convention in Chicago, McGovern lost out to Hubert Humphrey for Presidential candidate and to Edmund Muskie for Vice-Presidential candidate.

In 1972, the Presidential candidates for the Democratic nomination started out with George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Terry Sanford, John Lindsay, Wilbur Mills, Vince Hartke, Fred Harris, and Sam Yorty. The battle for the soul of the Democratic Party began as the pro-Vietnam War candidates such as Humphrey and Jackson battled against the anti-war candidates like McGovern, McCarthy, and Harris.

According to Wikipedia:

South Dakota Senator George McGovern entered the race as an anti-war, progressive candidate, picking up where Eugene McCarthy had left off in 1968. McGovern was able to pull together support from the anti-war movement and other grassroots support to win the nomination in a primary system he had played a significant part in designing….

On April 25, 1972, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary and journalist Robert Novak phoned Democratic politicians around the country, who agreed with his assessment that blue-collar workers voting for McGovern did not understand what he really stood for. On April 27, 1972 Novak reported in a column that an unnamed Democratic senator had said of McGovern: “The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot. Once middle America – Catholic middle America, in particular – finds this out, he’s dead.” The label stuck and McGovern became known as the candidate of “amnesty, abortion and acid.”

Yes, that same Robert Novak.

The Democratic establishment sandbagged McGovern’s candidacy by just going through the motions. McGovern’s reforms to the party after all had cut them out of real decision making in the convention. Their restoration was in the form of the super-delegates that loomed so important in 2008.

McGovern was a small-town poli sci professor from Mitchell, South Dakota (the home of the Corn Palace). He was straightforward, hardworking, and in the age before large sums of money corrupted the Democratic party, honest in his positions, which were New Deal liberalism. For a while he worked at the Institute of Policy Studies, later with the Middle East Policy Council. He was against the war in Iraq, which he saw as a repetition of the mistakes of Vietnam. And he wrote a book, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now in 2006.

punkboyinsf J’Tao
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@AyeshaKazmi meaning they support us? Or u think that someone is trying to link us to them to make us terrorists to us gov? #ows
9 minutes ago
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AmericanPaki
AyeshaKazmi AmericanPaki
Now thats a good question: What was Thomas Ryan doing scoping out #AlQaeda websites? ^_- … #OWS
10 minutes ago

{ Bwa ha ha ha! } Actually I do think Twitter is getting record traffic plus the SW/HW folks have been doing various upgrades to the production system (e.g. I’ve seen complaints about various symptoms of not being able to post on Twitter).

Yep Wilbur Mills, the “chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee” was found by police drunk with stripper Fanny Foxe in the vicinity of the Tidal Basin. That was back when corruption was more innocent. :-)

As Wall Street’s corrupt influence on the economy has grown, the corporate ownership of our food system has hurt the health and livelihood’s of some of our most vulnerable communities. This Sunday, December 4th food justice activists and occupiers will be traveling from as far as Colorado, Iowa, Maine and Upstate New York to join together for the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH.Through a day of dialogue, musical performances, and a march, farmers and their urban allies working for food justice in their communities will form alliances to fight and expose corporate control of the food supply.

•Events on December 3, 2011
•VZ vs. the 99%: How the Occupy Movement is Changing the Rules of the Game!
Starts: 12:00 PM
Ends: December 3, 2011 – 1:30 PM
Location: McPherson Square
Description: Did you know Verizon generated “upwards of $22.4 billion dollars in profits in the last 4 1/2 years” but still let the bottom drop on hard working families by “eliminating 68,700 wireline jobs in the same 4 years”. Currently, Verizon Wireless is refusing to compromise on the $1 billion worth of employee benefits ($20,000 per Verizon worker). The fight for fair wages and basic benefits has always been a struggle. Come learn about how this fight has become the embodiment of the 1% vs. the 99% struggle and meet with Verizon rank & file workers and community allies as they provide an update on the campaign, make concrete asks of solidarity, and help us brainstorm creative ways to further push back on Verizon and what they stand for.
Moderators: Rosa Lozano & Lilian Shelton (Jobs with Justice & DC Jobs with Justice), guest speakers: Voices from CWA local 2336

This morning, Chris Hayes talked extensively about OWS and included Occupy our Homes mission. Very proud to see fellow citizens working to keep us all from being thrown into the streets Homeless with no comfort.

About a year and half ago when Bill E. was doing his Friday Constitution blogging we discussed this issue between the two of us. A Credit Union run by FDL members and Progressives with a stated mission that all the members/owners agreed upon. It would definitely serve the 99%!